News & Media

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2

By
EA
- 08-09-16

Trials of Gnomus, The Next Free Content Update Is Here!

Hello, PvZ fans!

We're ready to launch our next free content update and it's jam-packed with goodies of Gno-mongous proportions. The Trials of Gnomus are about to start, unleashing tons of new content, including new game modes, unique weekly events with new loot to earn, a mysterious gnome merchant with an inventory of rare goods, an enigmatic new gnome underworld to explore, and more.

Trials of Gnomus introduces the Mystery Portal, a magical gateway built by gnomes to test the skills of the plants and zombies. Players can travel through the Mystery Portal to play three all-new limited-time game modes and earn Rainbow Stars to unlock Rainbow Chests and the Gnome Underworld. In this all-new area, players can engage in the Trials of Eternity, a series of challenging gnome trials that will test their speed, puzzle-solving, shooting, and memory skills. By discovering and completing the Trials of Eternity, players can unlock new rewards from legendary customisation items, to original Garden Warfare favourites, and eventually redeem prizes that will change their PvZGW2 universe forever.

The three limited-time game modes are:

Cats vs. Dinos – faceoff in a Jurassic battle of felines versus dinosaurs in this fast, competitive game mode fought in a new extra-large Gnomiverse multiplayer map.

Boss Hunt – team up with friends and take on the ultimate PvZ challenge as you battle epic bosses. Battle on higher difficulties to earn even bigger rewards.

Super Mix Mode – a new, crazier mix of Crazy Settings featuring different combinations of characters squaring off against each other.

And our biggest update yet wouldn't be complete without additional fixes and a full tuning and balancing pass for characters and maps. All details regarding this can be found below and as always we want to hear from you - your feedback helps us make this game the biggest, baddest, craziest shooter out there!

We hope you enjoy this update and continue to reach out to share your thoughts and suggestions with us so we can continue to improve the game together. To-looo-looo, let the Trials of Gnomus begin!

Marcel Kuhn,
Producer - Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2

New Features

Mystery Portal

Added a Mystery Portal in the Town Hall, where it goes... well that's a mystery. Come back often to see where it takes you!

Dev Team Notes: Chomp Thing’s main ability is regenerating health quickly. However, the rate isn’t fast enough currently to be substantial in any way. We also find he gets vanquished a little too quickly. Giving him a slight health boost will give him that extra edge to hide and regenerate.

Fire Chomper

Fire DOT damage decreased from 5 to 4, and number of damage ticks increased from 4 to 5.

Decreased damage from 10 to 8

Dev Team Notes: His fire breath compounds with his damage over time to create a very high damage output. Adjusting his DOT to be aligned with other fire DOTs and decreasing his damage slightly will decrease the rate at which he can vanquish zombies without altering his effectiveness too much. Changes to his DOT do not decrease his total damage output, only the rate at which the damage is dealt to stay consistent with other fire damage. One application of his fire DOT will still deal 20 damage as it did before, and as do other fire DOTs.

Peashooter
Plasma Pea

Added 15 splash damage with a 4.5 meter radius to a non-character impact for fully charged shot. This does not affect his direct impact damage.

Dev Team Notes: Plasma Pea’s fully charged shot currently has no splash damage on a non-character impact, rendering it somewhat useless if it’s not a direct hit. It can seem like a waste to fully charge up and then deal minimal to no damage on a miss. Adding a small amount of splash to his fully charged shot makes a missed shot less punishing without affecting the impact damage.

Sunflower
Power Flower

Rate of fire increased from 5.4 shots/second to 6 shots/second

Dev Team Notes: She doesn’t have the damage output necessary to deal with enemies like the other sunflowers do. Increasing her rate of fire will not only help her damage output but also make it easier for her to hit enemies more consistently.

All-Star
Hockey Star

Decreased overheat penalty time by 1 second

Increased firing time before overheat by 0.5 seconds

Dev Team Notes: Because his time to fire before overheating is so short, it can result in his overheat penalty being longer than his firing time if the user holds down firing trigger. Decreasing his overheat penalty time and increasing his firing time before overheating will help make him more effective and satisfying to use.

Imp
Pylon Imp

Decreased splash damage from 9 to 3

Increased close/far impact damage from 9/5 to 12/8

Dev Team Notes: Pylon Imp is supposed to be an impact based character. He is currently doing far too much splash. For example, his splash against peashooter is more effective than peashooter’s against him. We've decreased his splash damage to fix this and increased his impact damage to compensate. He remains a very strong character to use, but players will need to be more accurate with their shots.

Scientist
Physicist

Increased Ammo Capacity from 5 to 6

Dev Team Notes: His damage output is decent and makes him an effective enemy. However, with one of the lowest ammo counts amongst the scientists missed shots are currently too punishing.

Astronaut

Increased close/far damage from 17/13 to 20/15

Dev Team Notes: His damage output suffers severely compared to other scientists. Increasing his damage a bit will help him keep up with the others.